Rats: These vermin probably chose a better bracket than you

FOX Sports

It's bad enough that all the NCAA Tournament upsets have already spoiled many a bracket.

It's quite another to be out-picked by a rat.

ESPN has gone through great lengths to create a Rat Bracket, dressing up vermin in the "jerseys" of all 64 teams and running them through a bracket-shaped maze to see which courtside critter would end up as the tournament's Big Cheese:

But chew on this: The rats actually did pretty well with their picks on Thursday -- correctly guessing 15 out of 16 games in the first day of the Big Dance (all except Pitt's victory over Colorado) and besting 98.2 percent of all ESPN.com's brackets.

It's not clear from the video if the rats chose Mercer over Duke, but they had Florida, Wisconsin, Wichita State, and Iowa State making the final four, and Florida winning it all. Rats gnawing out the right championship pick? Now that's a Cinderella tail.